Awakening to Non Faccia Donna

I've always thought you were beautiful
She said to me
Those words I longed to hear.
I boasted of my love for her.
She kindly smiled
And touched her soft face to her hand
To hide the tear she felt would surely fall
Had she not the will to look away.
Her voice,
Even softer,
Coursed its way through my bones
To the very epicenter of all that I know I am,
To the core of my self
Where I had not yet discovered
That my love for her resides,
Safe and protected
From all of life's harmful tragedies.
I could not but fall as she spoke of her love.
She held my knees with her words,
For my strength had surely failed them
The moment her lips touched the air with those words.
I could but scarcely fathom her eyes,
As though somehow they were held between the glare of the sun
And the depth of all time
To rest gently
And kindly
On my own.
Her lips formed my name
In a question
To purpose my response for all that she had said.
And I,
In my frail and uncivilized voice,
A crackling form,
Broken and mended all at once by her love,
Could not but as utterance,
Softly,
Slightly,
And coarsely reply:
“I love you”
As her whispering form fell from the sky to my lap
To bring hope to my days
And bring life to my nights.
I can feel all that she is through the beat of her heart
As her soft silken hands stroke my head with her words,
Standing echoes of all she had said,
Dance through my head as I dream of her.
I could not but help to hold her tightly
As she spoke my name,
Whispering for my sake,
For she supposed me asleep,
Which I was,
But of what she knew not
Was that all of her words
And all that she was
All that she is
And now all that she holds
Was always my dream
And always my wish,
And those words and my name...
Always a part of me
And always were they known to me,
For I had been seeking her
And searching for her
Since the time we first parted,
Since the first time I dreamed,
When I knew not of dreams,
When a dream was no more than a colored wish sleeping,
I knew of her love
And I knew of her voice
And since the first time I awakened,
I've been searching for her,
So long and so hard I have looked
And at last
At this moment,
When my eyes were so closed,
With my head on her breast
And my heart in her hands,
As she wondered if I ever knew her before,
If I could fathom her love for me,
If my skin could be hers,
Her heart could be mine,
If my heart and hers
Were as delicately real and the same
As she felt they were,
As she wondered,
She knew,
For through all of her travels,
Through all of her life,
Through time,
Space,
And stars
She had seen me smiling,
Still,
Poised and waiting,
Silent against the back of her soul
Waiting for the moment
When dreams would no more exist
Or be all that we know to be real,
All that we know to be held as truth,
For each of us knew
We were once,
We are now,
And we shall be
for evermore.